A transesophageal echocardiogram is an alternative way to perform an echocardiogram. A specialized probe containing an ultrasound transducer at its tip is passed into the patient's esophagus. This allows to record precise ultrasound images of different components of the human heart.
For a full transesophageal echocardiography (TEE) examination 20 different 2D TEE views have to be acquired. These 2D TEE views are predefined views (e.g. ME four chamber, ME two chamber, TG basal SAX, . . . ), which are in practice also referred to as the 2D TEE standard views. In order to acquire these images, the sonographer has to reposition and reorient the ultrasound probe relative to the patient according to a very elaborated protocol for each of the 20 2D TEE standard views. This is a tedious and long procedure, which may take about 20 to 30 minutes.
The whole TEE procedure is quite uncomfortable for the patient. Apart from that, manually finding the above-mentioned standard views in order to allow a reliable diagnosis requires a relatively high level of skill of the sonographer (e.g. doctor). Moreover, this process is relatively error-prone.
US 2011/0201935 A1, a former patent application filed by the applicant, proposes for the similar field of fetal heart examinations the usage of 3D ultrasound scanning technology. The therein proposed ultrasound imaging system comprises an ultrasound scanning assembly that provides volume data resulting from a three-dimensional scan of a body. It further comprises a feature extractor that searches for a best match between the volume data and a geometrical model of an anatomical entity. The geometrical model comprises respective segments representing respective anatomic features. Accordingly, the feature extractor provides an anatomy-related description of the volume data, which identifies respective geometrical locations of respective anatomic features in the volume data. Standard views may therefore be automatically obtained from the volume data, which is of course less operator-dependent and allows a more reliable diagnosis. Compared to manually acquiring each 2D standard view separately, this is of major advantage.
However, there is still need for further improvement.